


Convenience

by SandrC



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Daemons, Canonical Character Death, Daemon Severance/Intercision, Fake Daemon, Gen, fuck Trent Ikithon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-19
Updated: 2019-12-19
Packaged: 2021-02-26 04:27:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,169
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21857575
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SandrC/pseuds/SandrC
Summary: Nott and Caleb are a strange pair. A pale, washed out wizard, and his goblin daemon.(Or they would be, if that were the whole truth.)
Relationships: Nott & Caleb Widogast, Veth Brenatto/Yeza Brenatto
Comments: 15
Kudos: 179





	Convenience

**Author's Note:**

  * For [thebookishdark](https://archiveofourown.org/users/thebookishdark/gifts).



> I know very little about Critical Role save what I've gleaned secondhand and from fanfiction. I know very much about  
> His Dark Materials. So I found people who knew CR better than me and then asked them for help. Coffee, Katie, everyone in the Aro/Ace server — thanks y'all.
> 
> Since it didn't come up naturally, here's the Nein and their daemons:  
> Molly — peacock (Polly)  
> Jester — hooded magpie (Yura)  
> Fjord — black banded sea krait (Ursula)  
> Yasha — bearded vulture (Serafim)  
> Beau — lesser sooty owl (Robin)  
> Caduceus — reindeer (Camillia)  
> Bren — Bengal cat (Frumpkin)  
> Veth — platypus (Terrell)
> 
> I have been told that this is fairly in character. Go me. I wrote this while listening to Autumn Orange's lo-fi CR albums. Mainly Sad Wizard Vibes. It just jives with me. I'm a sad bitch.
> 
> More lore that didn't matter in the long run at the bottom.
> 
> Warning: non-consensual daemon intercision, non-consensual daemon touching, drowning, unhealthy dependency, disjointed narrative

**i.**

They come to town, the odd pair. A filthy human man with hair the color of flames and eyes an ocean blue and a small person in a cloak and wraps. Both are quiet, lay low (until they don't), then leave. _Usually_ under cover of night. _Often_ with stolen goods.

 _Neither_ of them have daemons.

No one wonders _why_ though. They're just weird. Passing through. They don't matter in the moment, and it's not as if the Crownsguard would bother accusing random vagrants of being witches. It would be a waste of resources.

But when they _do_ matter, when they _belong_ and are asked about it, their story is short and sad and _unexpected_.

"Nott," Caleb tells Jester, eyes distant and smile forced, "is my daemon." The rest of the group make a myriad of faces, but Jester is enamored.

"I've never heard of someone having a _goblin_ daemon!" Her eyes sparkle, as do Yura's, and Nott bares her teeth at them both.

"We don't like to advertise the fact." And _that_ is _that_. Conversation _over_.

(No one else says a word, too uncomfortable to speak up.)

**ii.**

Nott is thirty feet away and Caleb doesn't look ill. Nott is _forty_ feet away and Caleb doesn't look any more or less pale than before. Nott is **_sixty_ **feet away and Caleb casts with the same precision and skill as before. The battle ends and Nott comes trotting back, covered in blood and looking smug.

"You let her get a ways out, don't you?" Fjord asks, voice low and neutral. His face is imperceptible, a stony mask. Caleb's is as unreadable.

"She comes back."

"I disarmed the traps," Nott adds, sharp and much less controlled than Caleb. "The least you can say is ' _thank you Nott_ '!"

Fjord opens his mouth but stops. Then he shrugs and nods at Nott. " _Thanks_."

"You're fucking _welcome_. Now let's get on. Don't expect the guards to ignore the ruckus for long." And she walks off again, Caleb's hand in hers.

(Hours later, Jester throws up from the exertion of sending Yura to scout thirty feet out. Nott chides her and tells her to just delegate it to her from now on. To not pull too hard. She pats Jester on the back and it is startling to everyone save Nott and Caleb, who walk off without another word.)

**iii.**

There was a severed man up in the monastery. The Cobalt Soul didn't do it to him—they wouldn't be _cruel_ like that, to _destroy_ someone's _soul_ like that—but his blank face is _so similar_ to the feeling Beau gets when she looks at Caleb.

Only Caleb has _Nott_. Nott, who can go on _forever_ with _no pull_. Nott, who taps out spells on the wire around her wrist. Nott, who is a _goblin_ , and goblins _aren't_ daemons. They don't even _have_ daemons!

But she sees his face some days and thinks about the severed man and wonders.

(Nott is _far_ too clever to be a goblin anyhow. So she _has_ to be a daemon. That's the only logical explanation, even if Beau still feels like she's missing pieces.)

**iv.**

Molly doesn't ask. He and Polly make an odd pair—a brightly colored peacock and a brightly colored tiefling, both _supposedly_ male with a distance of almost a hundred feet separation, the mark of a witch if anyone bothered to believe in superstitions—so he doesn't ask much. But he's not _dumb_.

_Caleb and Nott are lying._

Polly likes to touch the other daemons, draping himself all over them in languid puddles. It's reassuring and reminds him that he exists in the same way that Molly indulging in his hedonistic pleasures does. So, while Jester and Fjord and Caleb and Beau and Yasha are off doing something in town, he strikes.

The feeling of static on skin and metal in packed dirt and empty _empty **empty**_ flashes through Polly to him, but Polly remains in contact with Nott until she beats him off with her hands and threatens to shoot him. Then, wings raised in placation, Polly returns to Molly and they ruminate.

(He doesn't say a thing. It's not his to tell. Not that he has a leg to stand on with regards to things like _this_.)

**v.**

"Never met a daemon that could use _tools_ ," Fjord admits one night. " _Pretty_ impressive."

"Never met a _tool_ who had a daemon. _Equally_ as impressive," Nott replies. She's busy cleaning her crossbow, face scrunched in contemplation. After stabbing herself in the thumb with one of the small pins, she swears and jams it in her mouth, clipping herself on her teeth. She swears louder.

" _Trying_ to pay you a compliment." Fjord tries to ignore the hissing laughter of Ursula from around his neck. It doesn't work, as his face heats up anyway. Nott doesn't seem to notice, though, and that's a relief.

"I take gold pieces. _Silver_ , if you're being stingy," is Nott's idle reply. She continues, still trying to clean the trigger mechanism of her weapon, "but if you want me to _take_ a compliment, maybe make it _sound_ more _like_ one."

"I...it _is_ one though?"

"Would you tell a child they were good with tools ' _for a child_ '?" Nott fixes her bright yellow eyes on him and he feels pinned. Not by an _animal_ , like he would expect, but by a disapproving parent. Even Ursula stops laughing.

He shakes his head, once.

She grins and points one of her tools at him to emphasize her point. " _There_. Just pay me a _people_ -compliment then. Easy."

"Fair enough." He wallows in uncomfortable silence for a bit before he leans over her shoulder and nods his chin at her weapon. "Mind showing me how it works?"

She doesn't teach him, but she doesn't make him leave either. And when he accidentally taps the back of her neck with his bare hand, she says nothing.

(Caleb snores softly but doesn't wake, and an additional " _how the fuck_?" crosses his mind but he doesn't ask. He's pushed enough for one day.)

**vi.**

"Where is your daemon?" Camillia asks, her head bent low to be eye-level with Nott. Nott, who bristles. Nott, who hisses.

"I _am_ a daemon!" She shrieks, trying to put distance between her and Caduceus's large reindeer daemon. "I'm _Caleb's_ daemon!"

Camillia hums, low, and says nothing else.

At the table with Caleb, Caduceus inclines his head and asks, "So where is your daemon?"

" _Over there_ ," Caleb, practiced, nods at Nott.

Caduceus turns to look at her, then back to Caleb, his face placid and unreadable. "I'm _sorry_. That must have been painful."

(Caduceus does not elaborate. Caleb does not ask. They don't speak of it again.)

**vii.**

"Intercision is _painful_ ," Master Ikithon says, pressing Bren down into the chair, "but _necessary_. You want to be useful for the Empire?" Bren does not answer, his wide eyes locked on Frumpkin. " _You want to be useful for the Empire?!_ " Master Ikithon snaps, grabbing Bren's face so he's looking up at him.

Bren nods, barely able to in his teacher's grasp. " _Ja._ Yes. I want to be _useful_."

"As I thought," Master Ikithon lets go and steps off to grab the guillotine and wheel it between him and Frumpkin. " _Now_ , Astrid and Eowulf have done well and I expect great things of _you too_ , Bren. You won't let me down?" The blade of the intercision device raises up, _up, **up.**_

" _No_." He isn't sure if he's responding to Master Ikithon's question or if he's protesting what is about to happen. His ears are ringing. His heartbeat is in his throat. He is _terrified_. In the cage he's being held in, Frumpkin screams _fury_.

" _Good_." Master Ikithon smiles. The blade comes down.

(His world goes white and red and orange. There is burning and he is gone _gone gone **gone.**_ It isn't until _so much later_ —free of the asylum and running as far from Rexxentrum as he is able—that he finally realizes he is _alone_. The anguish cracks his voice and the horror, his spirit.)

**x.**

"You're so _lucky_ t'be able to fly!" Nott slurs. She has her mostly-empty flask in her lap and is gleefully tossing the bones from her meal to Serafim. "Must be _so_ freeing, seeing the world from _wayyyy_ up high!"

"Did you not fly before you settled?" He tilts his head, staring her in the face as she bursts into hysterical laughter. "What did I say?"

"No, it's _not_ you, _promise_!" She manages to get out around a snorting gigglefit. "It's just that _everyone's_ wrong!"

"How so?"

"'Bout me. N' _Caleb_."

" _Oh_?" Serafim is so like Yasha and so _not_. The large vulture is brightly colored while the large woman is washed out and monochrome. But their mannerisms are all-too-alike and Nott is too sauced to find that anything less than hilarious.

"That's _my boy_! M'not his daemon. And I would _kill_ for him. _Have_ before." The giggly drunkenness is replaced with a stern and solemn look. She meets Serafim's eyes and repeats, " _I'd kill for him_."

(They take her at face value. That's the kind of people Yasha and Serafim are. They also don't tell anyone. That, too, is the kind of people they are, but Nott has to squash an ugly panic when Yasha leaves with Obann. It's not about her. Not _now_. **_Not now._** )

**ix.**

"Your daemon could get me a piece of wire?" Nott asks from their cell. Caleb's smile tightens at this.

"Not a daemon, but _ja_. You could get us out?" Transactional. Formal. Broken.

" _Sure?_ " Nott stares at this strange human man and his not-daemon. "But what _is_ it if not a daemon?"

"A _familiar_. It is old magic, from _before_ daemons." He is simple and precise with his wording. At his command, Frumpkin slinks between the bars of their cell to steal them a makeshift lockpick. "And _yourself_?"

"Goblins don't _have_ daemons," she counters, curt and angry. He hums to himself but doesn't press the issue. Time passes and the not-daemon brings back a bent wire and Nott manages to get them out and they could part ways, but this is _so_ convenient, isn't it?

(" _I'll_ be your daemon. No one can prove I'm _not_. That way, if you get called out for not having one or _I_ get called out for being a goblin, _we're good_! Tit-for-tat, _right_? Like a con!" And, thank _whatever_ god is listening, they stick together. Caleb-and-Nott. Human and goblin-daemon. And it _works_.)

**x.**

Veth yells at Yeza to run, to _flee_ , to get out and save Luc. And then, vial in hand and Terrell at her side, she barrels into the fray. She is going to die but they're going to escape and that's _all_ that—

There are goblin hands holding her down under the water and she can't _breathe_. Just outside of her line of sight, she can see them slowly taking Terrell farther and _farther_ away, pulling at her chest even as the air leaves and her heart skips and stammers to try and keep up. Water is _everywhere_ , blue and green and muddy red, and she can't _she can't **she can't**_ —

Green hands and _where is Terrell_? Where _is_ he? Where is _her soul_?! But her skin is _green_ and she is not _Veth_ she is not _a halfling_ she is _Nott_ and she **_screams_** , a keening whine as she understands—

Goblins don't have daemons and _this_ is what saves her. Their desire to make her _suffer_ is what keeps her around. Half of her is gone, the rest marred beyond recognition, and she can't even have the joy of being killed like a halfling. She has to work like a goblin and it's worse than anything she could ever—

The cell is cold and he doesn't have a daemon either and _maybe_ it's okay but—

They feel like _home_ but they call her _daemon_ and—

They're in too deep and Yeza is in danger but she _can't tell them_ yet because—

She covers herself in magic, in _Veth_ , and says she's here for her son, _lies_ about Terrell, and _hugs her boy_. She was _supposed_ to be—is, has, _will be_ —dead but _here she is_ and Luc is hurting and _she_ can't—

They look at her and she sobs and tells the truth and it _hurts_ because she _died_ and she is _not_ Veth and she is _not **Nott**_ and she is—

(His name was Bren and he was severed by his teacher, by "his people", and it _hurts_. It hurts _all the time_. His daemon _was_ a cat, was _Frumpkin_ , like his familiar, but he's Dust now. It's not the same and it isn't enough and she _understands_. They are broken and can never be fixed.)

**xi.**

Nothing changes. _Everything_ changes. They don't have to lie.

Well, they have to lie to _strangers_ , but that's nothing new.

But home is where the heart is, and the Mighty Nein are home.

**Author's Note:**

> Camillia is named for the plant used in tea. She has lichen growing off her antlers. Reindeer are the only ones where the females grow antlers and the idea of Cad with a daemon that had moss and lichen dripping off of its antlers is great and, while same-sex daemon exist, I wanted to have fun with this.
> 
> Polly is named as such because, while Molly was still MT and not talking, they tried to get Polly to talk as well. The only thing that got a reaction out of him was being asked "Polly want a cracker?" which got a very hearty "fuck you!"
> 
> I gave Veth a platypus because nesting, aquatic, and venomous spur. Terrell doesn't exist any more because when Veth died, he died, and that's part of the reason that Nott doesn't ask Caleb to help her be Veth again. Because she's terrified that she'll become severed and hollow or that something will be wrong with her because her daemon died.
> 
> Frumpkin is dead. Or, if not dead, he is missing and Caleb is too scared to seek him out. Trent was intercising the Scourgers for several reasons. The least of which is control. The most of which is they're more useful if their daemons can go farther. Astrid and Eowulf don't have set daemons in this AU, nor does Trent.
> 
> Beau's daemon being named Robin is both a joke at her name being a layered pun (Beau, bo-staff) and she calls him "Rob". I like owls from the Tyto family.
> 
> The black-banded sea krait is a venemous sea snake that has a neurotoxin. It can paralyze your spine. I did name her Ursula for many reasons but mostly for the Little Mermaid joke.
> 
> I like bearded vultures and also a creature that eats bones and lives in the desert/mountains is a good one. Serafim being pretty self-explanatory wrt names.


End file.
